


Notes From Undergrad

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [9]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Collegestuck, F/M, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multi, college is hard and nobody understands, why do all these warning tags have to do solely with psiioniic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 21:03:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6723352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Marisol Perez, you are a visually impaired college student, and you plan to learn all that you can at Columbia. And sure, you learn a lot, not all of it academic. The three of them - Simon, Katya, and Krishna, each have things to teach you, particularly the first one.</p><p>You name is Simon Cao, and you later come to refer to that particular relationship as a series of sporadic one night stands, but the truth is murkier than that. You’ve always had a problem differentiating between platonic, romantic, and sexual, and your friendship with Marisol is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the best minds of my generation

**Author's Note:**

> at this point, i'm gonna start calling spring break the "great upload"  
> y'know, when i go through the collegestuck tumblr, revise fics i think are decent, and post them here.  
> this is a whole bunch of drabble-ish stuff detailing the golden quartet (redglare, psiionic, signless, and the disciple) in college.
> 
> as always, although i think most of my regular readers are familiar with the names -  
> Krishna Vandayar = The Signless  
> Yekaterina "Cat" Levin = The Disciple  
> Simon Cao = The Psiioniic  
> Marisol Perez = Neophyte Redglare

_**Marisol Perez - October 1998** _  


Your name is Marisol Perez, and freshman year - which has finally kicked into full swing - is positively awful to behold.    
  
Either your sixth or seventh week of college, you are sitting in the library trying not to despise your existence. Your latest American Government essay earned you a 76 and contains so many comments from your professor that you’re sure he’s written more on the paper than you have. You could have taken this sort of grade from a different class, but American Government? You’re pre-law. You’re supposed to know this shit.   
  
Also, there’s the pressure. The pressure to live up to your potential. The pressure to excel, to be the first person in your family to finish college. To have stories of triumph to relay to your mother, father, and brothers, for when you go back to your dingy walkup in Flushing for winter break. You have nightmares of not measuring up, of failure, of inadequacy, and with each C you earn, they start to feel more they’re like self-fulfilling prophecies.   
  
One day you will fail out, and be something beyond shame or redemption. Given the opportunity of the lifetime, and let it slip through your fingertips. 

This is how Simon finds you, sequestered on one of the upper floors of library, your head in your hands. Simon Cao, one of your roommate’s best friends. And while Katya has a lot of friends, these two have known each other since high school.

Simon sighs.   
  
“Contrary to everything you’ve been conditioned to believe, you are actually more than a number,” he tells you. “The system screws you up until you start equating your self-worth with test scores.”   
  
But that’s what law schools and graduate programs will see after all is said and done: a name, and a grade point average, and you make to say just that. You shake your head, in refutation to his statement, and the tears start falling before you can stop them.    
  
“What if I fail out? If I’m too stupid to be--”   
  
“If you were to stupid to be here, you wouldn’t have gotten in.” Simon closes your textbook, and puts his hand on top of yours. He sighs. “I can’t think of a single freshman who didn’t get overwhelmed, myself included. In high school, all they did was drill that prep bullshit into our heads, how to stand out, how to distinguish ourselves in college apps, but they never told us what the fuck you’re supposed to do after you get in.”   
  
He seems to be talking more to himself than to you, so you let him. Ranting in a whisper, like some sort of paradox, so as not to disturb the others working the library. Let him get going about the educational system, and he sounds nearly like Krishna, eyes full of revolution, and mind full of contempt about the status quo.   
  
When he’s finished, he rolls up the sleeve of his cardigan and guides your index and middle fingers over a deep, straight-line scar on his forearm, his eyes narrowed all the while.   
  
“My first fifty-five, Marisol. Third week of freshman year. Expository writing.”   
  
You blink at him, utterly lost for words at this revelation. Krish and Cat have made oblique references to the fact that Simon isn’t exactly sane - as if watching him joyously and drunkenly recite Howl to nobody in particular, clad in nothing but his boxers, wasn’t already an indication - but this is different.   
  
It’s different in a way that terrifies you.   
  
You had always considered Simon’s issues in terms of “us and them”. Normal and Abnormal, where you fell firmly into the first category. You didn’t drink to excess. Your desk wasn’t full of pill bottles, both prescribed and unprescribed. You’d never been institutionalized. Crazy was something that happened to others, something to be pitied, something to be locked away, and something that would never personally affect you.    
  
However, what Simon has shown you is an avenue you’ve considered walking in the past, though not for long. The glint of a blade, and the punishment of blood.   
  
“Oh.” You swallow, gripping the edge of the table for something tangible. “I’m sorry.”   
  
He rolls his sleeve back down, neatens the cuff. His gaze seems to bore holes into you, as if he can ascertain the things that go through your mind just by looking. He closes your textbook, and takes hold of your hand.   
  
“It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s just something to watch out for. Take care of yourself.” He stands up from the seat beside you. “Let’s go for a walk, freshman.”   
  
“I have work to do.”   
  
He gives you a sidelong glance, and tells you to suit yourself. In the end, you do go with him, if only since your eyeballs are positively burning from four consecutive hours of study. You eat overly greasy pizza and listen to Simon mock his Classics professor’s accent.

As if he has any right, given his lisp.


	2. a lost platoon of platonic conversationalists

_**Marisol Perez - November 1998** _

You have an hour break before your next class, so you’re standing on the edge of the south lawn, taking in the last of the nice weather, and watching the students laze around. A few feet away, but not close enough to notice you, Krishna and Yekaterina sit beneath a tree. Krish strums idle notes on his guitar, while Cat rests her head in his lap.

Then, footsteps behind you. Your head snaps around, but it’s only Simon, looking thoroughly miserable after five consecutive hours of various physics lectures.

“If you stare at him any harder, your glasses’ll break,” he tells you, a lit cigarette between his fingers. 

He stands just above you upon the steps to Kent Hall. Reflexively, you jab him in the foot with your cane. Fuck this guy, seriously. Then, full understanding of his words hits you. Wait,  _ him?   _ Who the hell is he talking about. 

You recover from your confusion soon enough to devise an appropriate retort.

“And good afternoon to you too, asshole.”

He snorts, mutters something about weapons not being allowed on campus, and sighs. 

“You really need to learn how to take a joke, Mari,” he remarks. “Big deal, you want in Krish’s pants. So do a bunch of other people. Get in line.”

_ As if you would ever...  _

What an insult to everything for which you stand. You respect his radical ideology, nothing more, and nothing less.

“What makes you think I have any such desire….?”

“You’re pretty much staring holes into his Afro. Either you really like him, or you really hate him. Seeing as you’re always talking politics with him, and you haven’t tried to assault him with that fucking cane contraption, I’m guessing it’s the first thing.”

“Well it’s not him,” you mutter. “It’s not him I’m staring at.”

Then, your cheeks redden at this oblique confession; you were never planning to divulge to a single soul that you might kind of sort of have a thing for your roommate. Maybe on your deathbed, but not before then. And only if everyone else you respected had already died.

You turn to face Simon again, whose eyebrows are ever-so-slightly raised. His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out. More annoyingly, he doesn’t look that surprised. 

He stubs out his cigarette on a nearby column, much to your chagrin - that column is a piece of history that should not be treated lightly, you irreverent asshole - and offers you a wry grin of commiseration.

“Ah, young love,” he declares, mockingly, lighting another one of those godawful cancer sticks just to piss you off. “Even sweeter when it’s unrequited.”

This fucker. You don’t know where he gets off treating you like you’re twelve. You’re seventeen, he’s twenty-one, and you’re both in college. That should count for something. 

“What would you know about love, unrequited or otherwise?” you fire back. 

“More than you’d think, freshman.”

He sips at his coffee and volunteers no further information on that topic. However, you’re not done screwing with him.

“Was there someone in your revolving door of one night stands that got away, Si?”

He stretches his arms skywards and very narrowly misses setting aflame his flyaway hair. 

“You’ve been reading too many of Cat’s romance novels,” he says. “Love is a biologically advantageous delusion induced by certain neurotransmitters, nothing more, nothing less.”

“What about homosexual love, though? Is that biologically advantageous?”

“Leave it to a Catholic for a counterpoint like that,” he replies.

“Which is your pithy way of saying that you have no answer.”

The first time you attend a meeting for your college’s LGBT organization, it’s held in some empty classroom, Simon’s occupying one of the seats, playing his Gameboy Color and paying absolutely zero attention to the proceedings. He gives you a vague half wave of recognition. You two are the only non-white faces in attendance.   
  
“Didn’t peg you for the straight ally sort,” you say, as you two walk to the dining hall.    
  
“May God strike me down the day I become straight.”   
  
“I’m sure God has better reasons for striking you down,” you grin, using your cane to stop him just before he trips over a curb. The things that sighted people take for granted. He thanks you briefly, and continues walking.   
  
“Who knows?” he asks. “Maybe he’ll end up smiting me twice, y’know, just for emphasis.”   
  
One day, when he’s completely sober, and has just finished teaching you kinematics in the nick of time for your upcoming physics exam, he gives you a long stare.   
  
“What,” you want to know, perhaps a little too loudly, because the librarian reprimands you. Once she’s gone, he explains.   
  
“We are two morons on the same sinking ship.”

You think of him and Krishna.

You think of yourself and Cat.

You two are definitely morons.


	3. seeking visionary angels

_**Marisol Perez - February 1999** _

Katya takes you to abandoned places all over the city, areas either too high up, too far underground, or too obscure for the average person to find. How she managed to find them has to be the secret of the decade.   
  
Your father would drop dead of horror to see you joining this strange young woman, probably have her hauled down to central booking. It’s not strictly legal, your exploration, but when you tell her this, all she does is giggle, a pleasant sound that sends ripples through your chest.   
  
“Rules are boring. Why color inside the lines when there’s a whole book to investigate?” she asks.   
  
It turns out that your misgivings are flimsier than you thought. You follow her, if only because following her constitutes its own strange form of order. She is the upperclassman, after all.      
  
You rationalize your actions by telling yourself that someone has to keep an eye on her - _a woman alone is a woman defenseless_ \- but Cat seems more than up to the task of defending herself. You ask her if she’s ever been in a fight, and she never quite responds, but for the hard glint in her eye.   
  
“I’m a pacifist,” she says. “Technically.”   
  
You and she are seated on the platform of a deserted, darkened, and partially deconstructed train station when she begins reciting lines from a poem. Maybe you had to analyze it in high school, maybe that’s why you vaguely recognize it.   
__   
“…I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”   
  
Her voice echoes into the vast nothingness. This place reeks of damp and danger. Good thing you didn’t eat lunch before your little excursion, because all this law-breaking has tied your stomach into knots.    
  
If you peer down and shine the flashlight into the tracks, you notice - amid all the other graffiti - a comparatively fresh tag. A panther, perhaps, some sort of feline at least, rendered in dark ink, and a signature, “Katya ‘97”, that stretches on for a few feet. You tap Cat on the shoulder.   
  
“Yeah, Mari?”   
  
You point to the feline.   
  
“Did you do that?”   
  
She offers you a cryptic smile, and pulls you further into the tunnel. That’s your answer.    
  
You figure that she has to be insane, but then again, who is crazier? The madwoman, or the allegedly sane person following her? Her practiced footsteps barely make a sound, even if her voice does. She’s shouting for your benefit.   
  
“Just another three hundred feet!”    
  
You’re relieved beyond words when you finally come up and out the other side. You have never been more thankful to be in Harlem at dusk. Cat may approach these areas with a sort of reverence, but as for you, they scare you shitless. Who would hear you scream in there? Getting discovered by the authorities and rightfully arrested for trespassing (and vandalism, probably) would be the least of your worries.   
  
You tell her this, once you get back to your dorm room, and she shrugs.   
  
“Nothing’s ever happened to me before, and I’ve been down there dozens of times. It’s a good place to think.”   
  
“Famous last words,” you reply, filled with adoration for this young woman nonetheless. 


	4. ecstatic and insensate with a bottle of beer

**_Marisol Perez - April 1999_ **

**** Simon pours himself glass of wine, and sits down on the coffee table, even though there are actual chairs all over the common area of this suite. It’s amazing how thin he is, even underneath ten trillion sweaters. It’s equally amazing how terrible his posture is. You wonder if he ever stops slouching.   


He pours another glass, and offers it to you.   
  
You take a seat on one of the actual chairs arranged around the coffee table, and shake your head.   
  
“I’m underage.”   
  
Sure, underage drinking is second only to “no smoking in the dorms” on the top ten list of the most often ignored rules, but it’s the principle of the thing. You don’t break rules unless they clearly deserve to be broken. They are all in place for a reason. Order. Logic. Safety.   
  
Simon rolls his eyes, retorts with something like, “more for me, then”. He truly astounds you sometimes.   
  
“You do realize that drinking on your meds makes them less effective, yes?” you ask. “There’re little inserts on the bottles that say ‘do not consume alcohol on this medication’.”    
  
“Didn’t know you could actually read ‘em,” he snorts.   
  
One of these days, you’ll actually punch him in the face, but not tonight, because you just did your nails a few hours ago. Also, you promised Cat you wouldn’t deck him. So you bite your tongue.   
  
But knowing him, if you really did punch him, he’d call you “mistress” and ask you to do it again, harder, like you really mean it, Mari, come on.   
  
If only your family could see what you’re learning.    
  
You are most certainly getting an education, if not in the way you anticipated, solely from being friends with Simon, Krishna, and Yekaterina. In your few semesters of undergraduate study, you have learned that the little round contraption in Cat’s sock drawer is not a back massager, that Krishna occasionally cruises homosexual bars, and that Simon is a masochist. You had to look that last word up on the internet (something you immediately regretted).   
  
On a less sexual note, you have also learned where to find cheap textbooks, that the oddly placed knocker near the top of Cat’s doorpost is actually called a mezuzah (and is not actually a door-knocker for that matter), and that the C train only functions properly on the third week of every month ending in “-arch.”   
  
Simon pours himself another glass, you glare at him, and snatch the glass away, slopping wine all over the table.    
  
“What did I just tell you, jackass?”   
  
“If you’re gonna start acting like my psychiatrist,” he begins, wiping up the spill with one of his filthy t-shirts, “do me a favor and write me some better scripts.”   
  
“I pity your psychiatrist,” you say.   
  
“Me too.”    
  
The hours tick by, marked only by the dying twilight, and the sound of cars speeding down Amsterdam Avenue.   
  
Simon looks at the clock and sighs loudly. Evidently, this is not how he planned on spending his evening, sitting with you and drinking a bottle of Zinfandel, while Cat and Krishna attend some demonstration downtown.    
  
He chose not to show up, because the last time he went to one of those gatherings, he drop-kicked someone for trying to punch Krishna, and consequently wound up spending 48 hours involuntarily committed.   
  
You chose not to show up, because watching Krishna get beaten to a pulp once was enough for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact.    
  
You’re not afraid of blood, yours or anyone else’s, but seeing what cops - policemen like your father, who are ostensibly tasked with the duty to protect and serve - are truly capable of…  well, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Maybe that makes you a coward. Maybe you don’t care anymore.   
  
“So what’re you gonna do, Mari?” Simon asks, once he drains his glass. “Sit around and judge my life choices all night?”   
  
You grin in spite of yourself. “I can stand and judge you, if you wish.”   
  
“Go for it. Multitasking’s an important skill.”   
  
You really could, but your mind is downtown, despite your best efforts.    
  
You imagine Krish with his megaphone, and his giant sign, with Cat dutifully translating everything he says into ASL, and tap your fingertips against the table nervously. There’s no way to know where they are, or how they’re doing. Not until they either get back to the dorms, or call you from central booking to bail them out.     
  
You try to think of something else, anything else.    
  
You have a paper due for Lit Hum  in two days, but you finished it last night. You need to go to the office of the registrar and scream at whoever’s in charge until they let you overtally for a class related to interventionism in Latin America. There’s a pre-law society meeting coming up. Maybe you should RSVP for that. Maybe you should get an LSAT prep book while you’re at it.   
  
But that train of thought brings you to contemplating the law, the distinction between just legislation and unjust legislation. And all you can see are protesters, from many times and lands, from film and from memory, who did nothing wrong besides fight for their rights. And oh, how they suffered for it.   
  
Perhaps you should not have majored in History. Each course brings its own uniquely depressing revelation about the status quo. How many weapons? How much genocide? How many diseases? How many wars?   
  
All throughout history, a cycle of dissent, dystopia, despotism, and despair.   
  
_ (“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”) _   
  
You’re only a freshman and you’re already overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of human suffering, lain out before you in textbook format, in lecture monotone. How does Krishna stand it? How does he get up each morning with the belief that he can change anything?   
  
“Marisol?” Simon asks, waving a hand in front of your face. “You there?”   
  
“Yeah, I…”   
  
You pour yourself a glass of wine. “I’ll be fine.”   
  
“Rebel, rebel,” he comments. “Also, fair warning, this wine fucking sucks.”   
  
You’ll be the judge of that, and then you are. He’s right. It’s awful. You drink it anyway.   
  
Simon pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. You can’t make out fine details, but you do notice that his fingers are slender and graceful, perhaps from all those years of playing piano. He’s almost attractive, when isn’t actively trying to piss someone off, which is most of the time.    
  
You could live ten thousand years and never understand him. There’s a sensitive side to him, one capable of deep, and powerful devotion, and then there’s another side to him that’s akin to biting down on tinfoil.   
  
The next thing he says only proves your point.   
  
“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare? Wait, hold the fuck up, I can’t even tell if you’re staring at me with those shades.”   
  
He takes another sip of his shitty wine. You contemplate chucking the half-empty bottle at his head, but then you’d probably knock him out, and you’d have to clean up all the alcohol and broken glass.   
  
“You’re one to talk about rude, of all people,” you reply.   
  
“I am an expert in the art of being a douche,” he says.   
  
You roll your eyes.   
  
“And you’re proud of that?” You draw yourself up to your full height, which isn’t all that formidable, and lean forward so that your face is inches away from his, and the tip of your cane is jabbing him in the calf. “Tell me, were you always this much of an asshole?”   
  
A second passes where nothing happens.   
  
Then, he doubles over with dry wheezing laughter, evidently amused by the question. _Only him. Only Simon._   
  
This serves to infuriate you even further. The next time you see Cat, you’re going to tell her in no uncertain terms that you refuse to exist within fifty feet of this fucker for the rest of your undergraduate career.    
  
“Twenty-one years ago, I fell, fully formed, from a tree in the middle of the asshole forest, I’ll have you know.” He swirls the wine around in his glass, and continues to cackle.    
  
Blasted mentally fucked cynical bastard.   
  
“Considering your judgment, or lack thereof, you must have fallen headfirst,” you deadpan.    
  
He laughs even harder, clutching your shoulder for dear life. There has to be something seriously wrong with the both of you, because now you’re laughing too. But he isn’t done yet.   
  
“During my travels through the asshole forest, which bore a striking resemblance to Kent Hall, I happened upon the strangest discovery,” he goes on.   
  
You raise your glass to him, in tribute. “What was your discovery, oh wise one?”   
  
“Well, I happened upon a wood nymph, who invited me into his humble abode, and after plying me with food and drink, informed me that he was trying to liberate the other nymphs and bring about a revolution.”   
  
“A wood nymph,” you repeat.   
  
“A wood nymph with an Afro. He quoted Paulo Freire at me.”   
  
Relaxing in the face of this absurdity, you prop one foot up against the adjacent wall.   
  
“I was unaware that wood nymphs were into philosophy,” you grin.   
  
“Well, this one was.”


	5. who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes

**_October 1999 to February 2000 - Marisol Perez_ **

It starts out as a consolation gesture, your occasional encounters.

You’re halfway in love with Yekaterina, he would walk through fire for Krishna to touch him, so every so often, your morose musings about how you are two individuals on the same capsizing dinghy devolve into makeouts.   
  
But this is above and beyond your familiar activities.   
  
This is furious rankling physicality, with Simon’s body slammed up against his door, and you sucking marks from his jawline down to his pulse point. If you were taller, you’d hold his wrists above his head.    
  
Even though the balls of your feet scream from the effort of standing on them for such a long period, you refuse to back down.   
  
Yes, you’re angry. You’re angry because Simon got his wish, and you’re still where you were before. Just look at the happy triangle, while you’re on the outside looking in. You are so much emotion that your head spins to contemplate it.   
  
“Stronger than you look, freshman,” he remarks, between staccato breaths, still pinned between your body and the door.   
  
Very deliberately, you press a knee between his thighs, and that elicits a long groan from him, momentarily shutting him the fuck up. Your hips buck instinctively toward the sound, and your feet finally give way, causing you to fall forward against him. Narrowly, you miss smacking your face against the doorway..   
  
He catches you, but you can feel the muscles in his arm straining at the effort. Still, his eyes twinkle. “Never took dance lessons, I assume?”   
  
“Left my pointe shoes at home. You’d be surprised what I could do.”   
  
He pulls you back toward him by your belt loops, and pops the button on your jeans in one fluid motion. You gasp, slightly starry-eyed, and wonder how many times he’s done this in the past.   
  
His fingertips skitter across your hipbones, but dip no lower. You bite back a whine, attempt to shimmy out of your jeans, and fix him in your best glare.   
  
“Nothing surprises me anymore, Mari,” he tells you, yanking your pants down to your knees. “You, on the other hand…”   
  
“I,” you repeat, trying to think of your next move, resisting the urge to grind against his hand.   
  
“You’re inexperienced. No exposure. You’re like uncharted territory.”   
  
Even with your pants around your quivering legs, even with your face so red that it burns, you manage a decent retort.   
  
“Make it sound like you’re gonna jam a flag up my ass and claim me for Spain.”   
  
He inclines his head down  a tad, so he can nibble at your earlobe, and damn, how did he know you were into that? You didn’t know you were into that.    
  
“Never thought you were fond of anal,” he murmurs. “Different strokes for different folks, I guess.”   
  
You’re going to different stroke him square in the forehead with your Art History textbook in about a minute, a fact you make him aware of. He then points out that your pants are around your shins, and you’re still wearing your Converses, so he’s pretty safe unless you feel like bunny hopping to and from the bookcase just to prove a point.   
  
You bite down on his lower lip so hard that you taste blood, metallic, and strangely arousing. You lick your teeth and grin so widely that it may as well be a threat. He laughs and says that you remind him of Cat when you do that.   
  
“Screw you, Simon,” you tell him through gritted teeth, as you breathe his air, locked in this bubble created by your proximity. Where everything is wet, and heat, and an ache like hunger that simultaneously heightens and dampens your contempt. Binary thought must be contagious, because look at you now.   
  
“I’d assumed screwing me that was the general idea this whole time,” he says, glasses glinting faintly in the light.   
  
You raise yourself back onto your tiptoes, grabbing his shoulder to help you balance.   
  
“Would you actually, though?”    
  
The tips of your ears have gone red.   
  
Sure, you’ve imagined how his body would feel between your legs, without the interference of clothes. But making the request, bold and aloud, is completely different. Simon shrugs.   
  
“I screw myself frequently, Krish could tell you.”   
  
“You know what I mean.”   
  
“Obviously.”   
  
“So what’s your answer, Simon?”   
  
A century passes during that second of thoughtful silence.


	6. i'm with you in rockland

**_February 2000 - Simon Cao_ **

A serious thought hits you during your morning shower post-coital existential crisis, in which you stand under the spray of water and regret the last few hours.

You contemplate your life and where it stands.

Dating Marisol would simplify certain things, wouldn’t it? A classic case of pairing the spares. Yekaterina and Krishna could go on exchanging looks of adoration and plotting revolutions and being perfect for each other, without trying to make an awkward place for your cynical self and calling it a triad. 

You know the writing on the wall. Things are bound to change, unless you pair off with another like a regular person. Assimilate, Simon, that is your destiny.

And Marisol is pleasant company nowadays.

As a freshman, her apple-polishing lawful good tendencies made you want to kick her into Seventh Avenue traffic, but she’s mellowed out, probably because her roommate’s idea of a nice Saturday out involves three kinds of spray paint and tagging empty subway tunnels. Cat could turn a nun into a miscreant.

Moreover, Marisol tells you exactly what she thinks of your choices, tact be damned, and you grudgingly appreciate her analysis, even if she is freshman-aged. You have come to genuinely like her as a person. You two could go on dates, muttering cruel sardonic things about the people around you, and then watch movies on your grainy television set, and maybe stop trading jibes for long enough to make out.

An unbidden clock ticks inside you, a timer that you only started paying attention to during your Dev Psych class, as your professor lectured on Erikson’s stages of development.

One in particular caught you, hook, line, and sinker.

_Young adulthood, ages 18 to 30 - Intimacy vs Isolation._

Of course, there are other theories of development, but you’re fixated on the binary set, surprise, surprise. Intimacy or isolation. Finally get your shit together and have lasting intimate relationships, or stay alone. Yes, you have Krish and Cat, for reasons you still fail to understand. However, one day, probably once they enter the real world, they’ll realize that two raises fewer questions than three, and cut you off accordingly. These kinds of fears keep you up at night.

You wouldn’t blame them, either. You are a trainwreck of a human being, a slave to your cycles of mania and depression, with occasional appearances from your dalliance with alcoholism. Perhaps the jagged rise and fall of your moods would even out if you stopped drinking on your mood stabilizers, but you’re not responsible enough to test that out yet.

Not to mention Cat is still furious with you about last night, when you and Marisol decided to cross _all the bases_ in one fell swoop. In your defense, it was Mari’s idea in the first place, although you should have been the voice of reason. 

You tried, but she was undeterred.

You barely had time to shower the next day before the incessant calls began coming. You answered the phone and Cat proceeded to explain in minute detail how you fucked up, although you were well aware of this fact already.

_Mari has a grand total of fuck-all experience wise. Uninitiated would be putting it mildly. She’s also Catholic, therefore sexual intercourse or carnal knowledge or eternal damnation, or whatever the hell the Catholics call it is a huge deal for her._

“This is not just another one of your one-night-stands, Simon!” Cat finally shouted, two thirds in English, and a third in Russian, before hanging up on you.

Indeed, it is not. The giant sunflower you leave at Mari’s door attests to that fact. 

That you left it out of guilt is the kindest interpretation. The others involve you crossing the wires between platonic, romantic, and sexual attraction for probably the ninetieth time since you even became sexually active. You resent your brainweird tendencies. They complicate your social life even further. All you want to do is form one close friendship where you don’t contemplate having sex with and/or dating said friend.

You operate through your morning classes on autopilot, still deep in thought, even as your professor drones on about esoteric concepts that you understood even before you took this godforsaken course.

You come back to your room to scarf down lunch before your next class, and Krishna tells you that Marisol would appreciate it if you picked her up from Contemporary Civilizations at 6, because she wants to talk to you.

You’ve been involved with enough people to know that _“we need to talk”_ actually means _“i’m sharpening the guillotine blade as we speak”._

Nevertheless, you obey, waiting outside of the building, and mentally wondering how many millennia you’ll spend in hell after you get decapitated. Then, you see her leaving through the front doors, and momentarily forget your future as Ichabod Crane’s successor.

Marisol half-smiles at you, continuing to hold that sunflower, which is now slightly wilted from being carried around with her all day, and hugs you. Her head barely comes up to your shoulder. You sag into her embrace.

You get a good look at her and notice that she’s actually got on earrings for once, light blue studs, though she’s also wearing her usual flannel shirt, tank top, and men’s jeans, under a padded coat that makes her resemble a penguin a bit.

_(You’d pegged her as a lesbian the first time you saw her at the LGBT center on campus. Based on recent events, you were at least somewhat wrong on that front.)_

So yes, Simon, you could date her, if you wanted to permanently alter that friendship, if you wanted to whack things even further out of orbit than they’re becoming.

“Evening, Si,” she says, finally letting go of you. Even that’s weird. Normally you two would be trading insults by now.

You nod, dig a cigarette out of your pocket, and light it. Ah, yes, nicotine. Nectar of the gods.

“Sup.” You return your lighter to your shirt pocket. “Going skating?”

She digs her board out of her duffel bag and shoots you the thumbs up.

“Ya tu sabe,” she grins.

Everyone has somewhere they feel completely at peace. Yours is either your room, or the Physics department. Cat’s is the Freedom Tunnel, green spray paint in her hand. Krish’s is probably any public area in which he is allowed to have a megaphone. Mari’s is the skate park on the West side, since, as she once told you, she’s been skateboarding since she was a kid.

You have no idea how a nearly blind little girl taught herself her way around any a skateboard, let alone won any sports contests.

The only thing you’ve ever won that wasn’t Science Olympiad was King of Iron Fist Tournament.

So even though it’s 31 degrees outside, you’re only mildly annoyed at being outdoors, and you stick around. Mari leaves the sunflower in your care, so she can become one with the halfpipe.

Watching her board is like watching Cat paint. They slip away from the outside world and drop into an almost trance state, single-minded and unencumbered. You don’t know where she gets this kind energy after a full day of classes, she must summon it from points unknown.

Eventually, she does return to you, leaning against the back of your bench. She plucks the sunflower out of your hand, and holds it up to the light cast by the dim sodium lamp, expression thoughtful.

“Is there some secret meaning to this that I should be made aware of? Krish and Cat had their own ideas, but I wanted to hear it from you.”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret,” you reply, with a wry grin.

Good save, Simon. Well, not good, but better than, _“…uh…”_

Marisol graces you with her usual annoyed frown. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

You glance quickly around the park to confirm that it is far too cold for anyone else to be here. There’s one possibly hypothermic pigeon, plodding along as if you might have some bread to spare, but other than that, nothing. You lean into Marisol and lower your voice to a murmur.

“Well, is there a secret reason why you thought having sex with me would be a prudent course of action?” you ask.

Her face relaxes as if she was expecting this. She shrugs, and puts her longboard down on the ground next to her feet.

“To clear the air.”

You gesture around the empty park, and roll your eyes.

“The air’s already plenty clear, Mari. Fucking freezing, to boot,” you tell her. Also, you’re religious, so it’s gotta be more than that.”

“Does it, really?”

You’re not sure whether she’s consciously trying to piss you off, or just a pro at doing it accidentally. Here you are, freezing your nuts off, after listening to Cat yell forever, and all Mari has to say to you is oblique, nigh-incomprehensible nonsense.

You pinch the bridge of your nose by way of calming yourself down. “Anyone ever tell you what a pain in the ass you can be?”

“You’ve covered it several times, Si,” she replies smoothly. “However, in light of your anger, I propose a trade.”

“Of what.”

“You tell me why you left me the flower, and I’ll tell you why I had sex with you.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” you offer.

She ponders this for a moment. “Do you often leave flowers for your sexual partners?”

“Nope,” you admit.

_(You’d owe the florist near W125th street a year’s tuition, and probably a kidney, were that the case.)_

To date, since your freshman year, you have given flowers to a grand total of Krishna, Krishna's mom, and Cat.

“So why am I special, then? Was I, uh…” At this, she trails off, and you laugh inwardly. If this was a contest, which it frequently is between you and Marisol, she lost her composure first and you win. “Was I particularly great at, um… well…”

You decide to ignore what she swore to you when the clothes came off. If she wasn’t a virgin, then you were the President of Antartica.

_(You dropped your boxers, she took one down below, and in typical virgin form, asked something like, “are you sure that’s going to fit?”_

_You should have called quits on the encounter then and there; far be it from you to devirginize a sophomoron, but she pointed out you’d already gone this far without stopping._

_“There’s a huge difference between third base and actual sex,” you insisted._

_“Prove it.”_

_You did.)_

“You were pretty good for your first time out,” you reply evenly.

Honestly, though, you cannot believe you are having this conversation in the dead of winter in the middle of a deserted park. You cannot believe you are actually having this conversation at all. At the start of your fifth and final year of college, you were sure you’d seen everything, but apparently not. This is a new level entirely.

It occurs to you then that she’s managed to the change the subject. Fucking Marisol and her knack for verbal evasion, honed from like ten trillion years of debate team. You almost fell into her trap, which pisses you off even harder. You exhale sharply through your nostrils and shoot her a glare.

“Are you ever going to explain last night, or are you going to stall for time until I become an ice sculpture?”

She flicks her wrist flippantly. “What d’you care, Si? You have sex all the time. What’s it matter why we did?”

If you had the time, you could write a book about this, and title it _“The Dumbest Thing I Did In College (Other Than Getting Arrested)_ ”.

First off, you devirginized your girlfriend’s roommate. Second off, you devirginized Marisol “massive lez” Perez. Third off, aforementioned woman was the one who came on to you in the first place. Fourth off, both of you were fully sober at the time, which means you had no reason to act so foolishly.

Most of all, though, you engaged in all these activities without plunging your room into complete darkness, which has practically been a prerequisite for you and intercourse, except in her case. Being unable to see again after several years of sightlessness kicked off Mari’s anxiety, so you switched the lights back on with minimal bitching. You told your unease to shut the fuck up.

Still, even as you should have been pleasure-focused, a part of you waited for her to notice the testaments to your failures, the too-straight scars crisscrossing your forearms and upper thighs. She never said a word, nor did her expression clock into the pity you expected. 

_(Krishna actually cried over them. Cat tried to talk to you about it. Both reactions made you uncomfortable.)_

Occasionally, Mari’s fingers would trace across a few of the marks, but not stopping or lingering, just in a manner of exploring your body. 

_(“Why does it matter?” this girl wants to know, now._

_For someone who would sooner run through fire than make themselves vulnerable, it means everything.)_

You ball up your fists in frustration, and narrowly stop yourself from saying something undeservedly vitriolic. It’s not her fault that she doesn’t get it. In fact, it’s better that she never get it, at least not firsthand.

You take hold of her shoulder, and gaze her straight in the face, wishing you could see her eyes through those red shades.

“Well, I’d like to believe it _meant_ something,” you say. 

That’s rich, coming from you, the king of meaningless trysts, but you never really lie to Marisol. She nods, and gestures for you to go on.

“I don’t care what it meant to you, if you were satisfying some curiosity about men, or you were rebelling against your upbringing, or you flipped a coin and heads was Cat and tails was me…” You extend your arms in front of you, and turn them so your palms face up. Though you’re wearing several layers of clothing, Mari must know what you’re trying to say. “But I let you see parts of myself that I do not show lightly. So I hope it meant  _something._ ”

She places one of her gloved hands on yours, and squeezes it. The area behind your eyes begins to burn, so you focus the on wool texture of her glove to hold your composure.

“That makes sense,” she says.

There are still more questions you want answered. Perhaps the most important question.

“What was with last night? What were you even thinking?”

She turns away from you, almost bashful now. If it were lighter, you might see her blushing. “It was actually a spur of the moment decision.”

“Impulse?” you ask. “You?”

Marisol, who plans, and organizes, and thinks ahead, always careful, always meticulous. She wouldn’t know impulsivity if she tripped over it while it was passed out drunk. Your mouth drops open in utter disbelief, but then she explains that she’d been considering it for a while. Your mouth opens slightly wider.

To hear her tell it, Sunday night was just the ideal moment to test a hypothesis.

“Just a silly little ‘what-if’ that you found the time to indulge, then,” you figure aloud.

It shouldn’t bother you so much. You’re trying not to be bitter. When you told her about Krish, Cat, and your triangle thing, she was immediately supportive, even despite her unresolved thing for Cat. So maybe you just need to swallow this, swallow it and get over yourself. You’re not the one who just went through your first time, after all.

You stare down at the asphalt, wondering if you can melt into it if you try. Marisol draws closer, her breath warm against your face.

“You misunderstand, though,” she says, leaning her forehead against yours. “It _did_ mean something to me, because _you_ mean something to me, Si.”

Her glasses are slipping down her nose, so you can see the tops of her sky-blue irises. You search her face for any sign of deceit, unable to decide whether her lying, or her telling the truth would be the more terrifying outcome. Finding no trace of deception, you swallow once, and try to formulate an intelligent response.

“Right, okay.” Then, once your heart’s no longer in your throat, you add, “You mean someth–a lot to me. You’re my friend.”

What a cop out, dude. If Cat were here, she’d smack you upside the head for it. However, Marisol takes it all in stride.

Before you go back to campus, you tell her exactly why you gave her the sunflower. Partially because of her generally staid style, and the fact that something so garish would annoy her greatly. Partially because she could do with a reminder to smile.

But foremost since she’d be able to see the bright colors even without her glasses. Their hues and shapes, though dimly, and without fine detail.

She leans close, and kisses you on the corner of your mouth. In rare form, you’re having too many simultaneous thoughts to actually focus on one. Small blessings.

Finally cold enough to call it an evening, you locate the nearest payphone, pray that Krishna is both in the room and not on AOL, and dial the number for your dorm room.

“Hello?”

“As your best friend in the whole universe, and as an upperclassman with god-given manifest destiny, I am asking you to get lost for tonight.”

Krishna sighs.

“Can I inquire as to why I am being displaced this time? I assume it’s something X rated.”

You shrug and hand the phone to Marisol, instructing her to, “say good evening to displacement.”

She takes it and holds the receiver to her mouth, mildly confused.

“Good evening, displacement?”

“Marisol?” comes the bewildered voice on the other end. “That you?”

“No, it’s acceleration,” she replies, smiling, and giving you no choice but to high five her.

Krishna asks you if you’re planning to engage in any activities that would require him to disinfect the room upon his return, but you doubt it, and tell him so. Not that shit again.

He’s thankfully missing by the time you and Mari get back to your room, probably at Cat’s, either doing the horizontal tango or speculating about what you’re doing. Either way, you don’t care. You strip down to your boxers - the heat is always too damn high in this room - and fall into a fitful slumber, Mari nodding off right next to you.

Somewhere between lethargy and unconsciousness, you think you remember to take your medication.

You awaken late in the night, and, squinting at your surroundings, you’re certain you’ve dreamed her, her soft brown hair hanging in her face like a curtain, her chest rising and falling. She lies next to you, sleeping peacefully. An apparition, a hallucination. However, hallucinations don’t leave their glasses on your bedside table, at least not in your experience. They don’t switch off the lights before they go to sleep, tell you that it’s only fair, and then threaten to elbow you in the sternum if you don’t stop arguing with them.

They don’t - hours before - kiss their way down your vertebrae, murmuring phrases that vibrate against your skin. And if they do, then maybe your neurochemistry has finally found enough balance in imbalance to give you a pleasant hallucination. 

You are the little spoon in this arrangement, even if Mari/not Mari is a foot shorter than you. This means you two can actually fit on your dorm bed. She curls up against your back and rests her head on your shoulder.

Krishna asked you after the sunflower incident if you had feelings for her, and you do, but you’re not sure what they are. 

She doesn’t quell your 3 AM catastrophizing, she doesn’t fix your anxiety, but she’s there. You still don’t understand what drove her toward you, but maybe you don’t have to. She’s your friend (to render your relationship down to its simplest form) and she’s around, either debating with Krishna, gesticulating with her cane, or skating down Eighth Avenue like she owns it, eternally kinetic.

Then, she’s gone in the morning, though she’s left a looseleaf note in her place.

_♊,  
I am writing this out because I don’t want to wake you up. You look like a total weenie, what with the long line of unbroken drool trailing from your mouth. Also, you bitch excessively when people wake you up, and I am not up for that._

_I continue to be flattered by the sunflower you gave me, which is currently sitting in a vase in my common room, and which I intend to keep until the last petal falls, or until someone accidentally knocks it over._

_Feel free to show that part to Krishna so he can marvel on how romantic that sounds and/or quote Romeo and Juliet in the process, 2x score multiplier if he exclaims “be still, my beating heart!” and 8x if you get it on your camcorder._

_I talked to Cat on the phone in the lounge for an hour or two, and she told me to be careful around you, something I already knew from being your friend. She’s under the impression that we are now seeing other, though that is not the case as far as I can tell. I think you have enough lovers to get along with, and I am currently married to my LSAT prep book until further notice._

_While I’ll never admit this again - so if you ask me to, prepare for a physical altercation - I admire your bravery, and I thank you for leaving the lights on._

_In case you were wondering, I asked you to meet me at Riverside last night because I wanted to figure out where we stood with each other. Given that we are terribly indecisive, and not at all good at confessions, this knowledge continues to elude me. However, to use disgustingly mathematical terminology, I think there might be something worthwhile in being undefined. You could probably tell me better._

_I’m ending this note here, since I think that’s Krishna unlocking the door, but just remember that the sandwich in your fridge is mine, and I’ll be mad if anything happens to it. >:]_

_Wake up and go to class, Si,  
\- ♎_

You carefully tuck the piece of paper beneath several old notebooks. Perhaps nowhere on your side of the room is fully safe, but you’re pretty sure it won’t get lost where you’ve stashed it. Krishna grins faintly at your sentimentality and you chuck a dictionary at him in response.  


End file.
